Prestigious academic journal since 1880 / SUN 2-8-26 / 1987 Dreyfuss/DeVito comedy / "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" sculptor / Social media tribute to a celeb, say / Margaret Atwood novel with a love triangle involving a paleontologist / Nonprofit group behind Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog / "Uhh ..." to Brits / Werewolf on TV's "Wednesday" / Fine-grained wood in some woodwind instruments / Disney heroine based on New Orleans chef Leah Chase / BMW offering since 2000 / Canadian coin featuring a polar bear, informally

Constructor: Chloe Revery

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Who's in Charge Here?" — an UNDERCOVER BOSS theme (115A: Hit reality TV series suggested by this puzzle's groups of circled letters): words for "boss" are hidden ("undercover") in circled squares inside longer answers:

Theme answers:

• ELASTIC HAIR TIE (23A: Scrunchie, e.g.)
• PRINCE OF WALES (39A: Title for William beginning in 2022)
• THE AD COUNCIL (45A: Nonprofit group behind Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog)
• DIRECT ORDER (67A: Explicit command)
• SHOCKING PINK (87A: Bright shade similar to magenta) 
• LIFE BEFORE MAN (96A: Margaret Atwood novel with a love triangle involving a paleontologist)

Word of the Day: Gian Lorenzo BERNINI (19A: "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" sculptor) —

Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (UK: /bɛərˈniːni/, US: /bərˈ-/; Italian: [ˈdʒan loˈrɛntso berˈniːni]; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor, architect, painter and city planner. Bernini's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as a uomo universale or Renaissance man. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture.

As one scholar has commented, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful ..." In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theatre: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches.

As an architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and public squares, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals. His broad technical versatility, boundless compositional inventiveness and sheer skill in manipulating marble ensured that he would be considered a worthy successor of Michelangelo, far outshining other sculptors of his generation. (wikipedia)

• • •

A rather tepid hidden-word theme. The hidden words aren't really "hidden" (or "undercover") if you highlight them with circles. They would be "undercover" ... but the circles make them overcover. Not all of these "boss" words are great. CEO is fine as a word for boss, but it is not an interesting term to "hide" in a longer answer. Way too short. Just gets lost in the longer answer. And HEAD, meh. That doesn't really say "boss" without some kind of qualifier. Department HEAD or something like that. Worst of all, from a pure elegance-of-execution standpoint, the "hidden words" repeatedly fail to touch all the words in their respective answers. Again and again, whole words in the theme answers are just hung out to dry, no "hidden word" involvement. The TIE in ELASTIC HAIR TIE, the WALES in PRINCE OF WALES, the COUNCIL in THE AD COUNCIL, the LIFE in LIFE BEFORE MAN. The most beautiful execution of the theme comes with SHOCKING PINK—solid name for "boss" (crime boss, to be specific), perfectly "hidden" across both words of the theme-answer phrase. Very nice. No other themer is anywhere close to that nice. Plus, it's hard to love a puzzle with THE AD COUNCIL (??) as an answer, or (frankly) a reality TV show as the revealer. Reality TV is overwhelmingly garbage. It's the world our illustrious president came out of (I swear to god I just typed "prison" instead of "president," weird ...). But let's leave aside my prejudice against the genre. Let's say UNDERCOVER BOSS is a great show and a wonderful asset for any crossword grid ... all the aforementioned thematic shortcomings still stand. The basic concept was fairly simplistic to begin with, and the execution just came up short.

There was some fun to be had in the non-thematic parts of the puzzle. "ARE WE DONE?" is lovely, and I quite enjoyed MOONSHINE (50D: Drink from a tub?), though I'm not sure about the tub part. Is the tub a reference to "bathtub gin?" I don't think MOONSHINE and "bathtub gin" are exactly the same thing. They're both homemade spirits, but  "gin" tends to have botanicals added. Still, "bathtub gin" is a kind of generalized term for home-distilled alcohol, which MOONSHINE is, so ... close enough, I guess. If the "tub" in 50D: Drink from a tub? refers to something else, one of you will tell me. I'm always happy to encounter liquor in my crossword, even if it's something I likely wouldn't drink myself (such as MOONSHINE). 

[77A: 1987 Dreyfuss/DeVito comedy]

There are three UPs in this grid, which is probably at least one too many, even for a Sunday-sized grid (ANTE UP, ROLL UP, EASE UP). I think I've seen as many as four in Sunday grids before. If there are so many that I notice (or if, god forbid, two of the UPs are crossing), then that's probably too many. The grid overall seemed solid enough, with only a few answers making me balk or wince. FANVID was probably the ugliest thing, to my ear/eye. I refuse to believe in it. Sometimes you have to treat "words" like fictional creatures and just refuse to believe. FANVID is a horrid-looking little piece of fill. I'm sure there are fan videos, but FANVID, barf (unsurprisingly, it's a debut). Fan culture (esp. online fan culture) tends to be insular and putrid, so ... pass. Unfortunately, looking up FANVID has led me to discover the term "vidding," which ... I can't bring myself to go into. You can read about it here. Oh lord ... and now I've discovered YOUTUBE POOP (abbr. YTP, in case any constructor out there is interested in absolutely ruining one of their grids). See, this is why you should never look things up. You're better off not knowing. 

I'm not sure I get why a COLD is a [Small bug?]. Is it because the virus is literally small? I mean, compared to, say, insects, or a rabbit or a microwave or a yacht or something? Bizarre. I get that ACNE can be found on your face, and it's hard (difficult?) to deal with (?), or maybe it's physically hard, but still, [Something hard to face?] doesn't seem like an apt description, even allowing for "?" leeway. There weren't many places I struggled today. Not for long, anyway. I confused the [Place for a shoelace] (EYELET) with the tip of a shoelace (AIGLET). I would never ever have thought of PEAR as a wood unless the crossword forced me to (as it did today) (30A: Fine-grained wood in some woodwind instruments). I misremembered BERNINI as BELLINI (which is a drink). SCIENCE was hard for me as clued (12D: Prestigious academic journal since 1880). The center of the grid gets a little ugly (ECIGS alongside ERM), but it didn't give me any trouble. I didn't know the Atwood title—that was probably the biggest hold-up for me, as it denied me traction in the SW (where I was already struggling with the erroneous AIGLET). But no part of this puzzle was particularly tough. It was mostly on the easy side of normal. 

[44A: Money in rock 'n' roll]

["I feel a hunger. It's a hunger." Truly one of the greatest opening lyrics of all time]

Side note: my spelling and grammar check would like a word with Mr. Money ...

["I feel hungry. I am hungry" — yeah, that's much better]

Bullets:

• 35A: Disney heroine based on New Orleans chef Leah Chase (TIANA) — where Disney princesses are concerned, I have memorized a few common names that come up in crosswords a lot (MOANA, ELSA, TIANA), but I know almost nothing about them. I can barely name the movie TIANA is from (something about a frog? can that be right? ... [looks it up] ... ha, it's true, The Princess and the Frog!). Anyway, I certainly had no idea the character was based on a New Orleans chef. Leah Chase was a highly honored chef and TV personality known as The Queen of Creole Cuisine. "Her restaurant, Dooky Chase, was known as a gathering place during the 1960s among many who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and was known as a gallery due to its extensive African-American art collection. In 2018 it was named one of the 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years by Food & Wine." (wikipedia).

• 9D: Werewolf on TV's "Wednesday" (ENID) — pfffffffft I know that "Wednesday" exists and is one of Netflix's more popular shows. Isn't that enough? Are you gonna make me go two three four deep on the character roster? Is "Wednesday" the new Star Wars? (been a few days since we've seen a Star Wars reference, btw—amazed we got through a Sunday-sized grid today without one, good job, everyone).

["I write in my voice! It's my truth! It's what my followers love!" LOL OK, maybe I love ENID.]

• 4D: Trouble with Z's? (INSOMNIA) — once again, I understand the clue, but I don't get what kind of word play the clue is aiming for. What is "Trouble with Z's" supposed to evoke? Everyone knows that "Z's" refers to sleep (most commonly in the phrase "catch some Z's"), but what is the clue doing with its "?"? What pun is being made? You've just replaced "sleep" with "Z's"? Why? I don't know why.
• 69D: "Uhh ..." to Brits ("ERM ...")— to Brits!? Isn't it bad enough we have to deal with all of our own hesitation sounds, your UHS and your ERS and your UMS? Do we need imports?
• 96D: Set of nine dancing in "The 12 Days of Christmas" (LADIES) — gah, I tried to get this song going in my head but I was all over the place and could not retrieve the LADIES. There were Lords a-Leapin' and Maids a-Milkin' and Pipers Piping and Drummers Drumming and Five. Gold. Rings. But everything was coming to me out of order. LADIES is such a straightforward word, I couldn't find it. Add this to my SW woes. LIFE BEFORE MAN, EYELET-not-AIGLET, and this.
• 51D: Concert broadcast that celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025, with "The" (OPRY) — needed a cross or two to get this one. I'm not used to seeing OPRY without "Grand Ole" attached.

[♫❤️ Iris Dement ❤️♫]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. big thank-you to the reader who saw that I enjoyed Lagavulin and so sent me ... Lagavulin. Is it that easy? Do I just have to say things I like and they materialize? Chocolate chip cookies! Vintage paperbacks! Labrador retriever puppy! 

P.P.S. Super Bowl today, which means only one thing to me—it's baseball season! Wearing a new shirt to get me in the mood:

[Available here—$8 from every shirt goes to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine / 2-7-26 / Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers / Reptile with a colorful name / Airbnb inclusion, usually / The Hornets, on a scoreboard / Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky" / "OMG"-evoking deed / Seldom-used PC key / Former e-book devices, until 2014 / Michael who plays Allan in "Barbie" / One of Oberon's subjects

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: STUPA (34A: Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) —

In Buddhism, a stupa (Sanskrit: स्तूप, lit. 'heap', IAST: stūpa) is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics, including images, statues, metals, and śarīra—the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. It is used as a place of pilgrimage and meditation.

Walking around a stupa in a clockwise direction, known as pradakhshina, has been an important ritual and devotional practice in Buddhism since the earliest times, and stupas always have a pradakhshina path around them. The original South Asian form is a large solid dome above a tholobate, or drum, with vertical sides, which usually sits on a square base. There is no access to the inside of the structure. In large stupas, there may be walkways for circumambulation on top of the base as well as on the ground below it. Large stupas have, or had, vedikā railings outside the path around the base, often highly decorated with sculpture, especially at the torana gateways, of which there are usually four. At the top of the dome is a thin, vertical element, with one or more horizontal discs spreading from it. These were chatras, symbolic umbrellas, and have not survived, if not restored. The Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, is the most famous and best-preserved early stupa in India. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, don't get me wrong, I appreciated the challenge. This one definitely put up a fight, something late-week puzzles don't seem to do that much these days, and I'm grateful. I just wish the grid itself were more ... pleasing, somehow. Some of the answers were, uh, questionable (a few ODDITYs, for sure), and so many of the clues just felt off or inapt—designed for misdirection, but perhaps ... overdesigned. A sharpshooter needs ... some kind of ACUITY, sure, but just ... ACUITY? I dunno. Not all (or even most?) ODDITYs are "treasures" (16A: Curio shop treasure). "GOD NO!" is a flat-out, dead-certain response to a question, not something you say when you see something fishy or unbelievable (14D: "That can't possibly be right!"). "Do you want to see the newest Marvel movie?" "GOD NO!" That's how that works. Like, "are you f***ing kidding me, absolutely not!" Whereas "That can't possibly be right!" is something you'd say if you were astonished by something that might, in fact, be true. I guess you could do a line reading wherein you make your voice more horrified, and put a little pause (audible comma) between "GOD" and "NO," but if you're alarmed like that, you'd probably start with "Oh." There's something tin-eared about this, and many other clues. And some of the answers as well. TOENAIL SCISSORS!? Do you all not use TOENAIL CLIPPERS? Imagining cutting my toenails with actual scissors is freaking me out. I don't doubt such things exist, but ... I don't doubt the ROSY BOA exists either, but what the hell is that? Do PUTTEES exist? Does an END key? I guess I believe you, but I can't really picture them. Stacking the grid with ODDITYs isn't the most entertaining way to achieve difficulty, and doesn't make for a terribly exciting experience overall. 

I think the thing I resent the most today, though, is the clue on A SPOT—a horrible partial that you'd think you'd want to make relatively unambiguous so that the solver could solve it quickly and move on. No need to have the solver dwelling on the garbage. Today, however, this answer—possibly the worst thing in the grid, from a pure "how good is this single piece of fill?" standpoint—was the thing that held me up the longest, the answer I spent most time with, and all because of the deliberately ambiguous clue (8D: "Save me ___!"). Why make me spend so much time with the worst you have to offer? Of course I wrote in "Save me A SEAT!" because that is the more likely answer, so much more likely that that is exactly how "A SEAT" has been clued in the past—three times! Whereas "A SPOT" has never been clued this way. It tends to be clued in much clearer ways, like ["You missed ___!"] or [In ___ (having difficulty)]. It's been fourteen glorious years since "A SPOT" has appeared at all, but that era is now over. Sigh. It's weird how much one wrong (and very right-seeming) answer can hold up solving progress. Add "A SEAT" to "ESC" (instead of the mysterious "END"), and you've got me all gummed up in the top. Specifically, I could not parse GENUS AND SPECIES at all—and again, the answer itself is not pleasing. I know GENUS and SPECIES but GENUS AND SPECIES? GOD NO. I do not know or recognize GENUS AND SPECIES as a standalone phrase. And I was so happy to see Pauline KAEL ... really thought she was gonna blow the puzzle open for me (she got me WAFFLE MAKER!). But alas, no. I was ground down by ... "A SPOT." Bah. 

The stack across the middle is solid enough. I could do without a MISSILE TEST in my grid, but GOOD SPELLER is OK. Despite the presence of the mysterious, made-up-sounding ROSY BOA (a debut, no surprise there), I think the center is the strongest part of the grid. The top is OK (GENUS AND SPECIES aside). The bottom, oof, no. Hard to think of a long answer more singularly unappealing than SONY READERS. A long bygone e-reader that I've never heard of ... in the plural ... why? And we've been over TOENAIL SCISSORS (CLIPPERS fits perfectly, by the way, if you didn't discover that fact for yourself). As a baseball fan for whom baseball season will start (mentally) as soon as the Super Bowl concludes on Sunday, I enjoyed RETIRE THE SIDE (46A: What a pitcher tries to do), though I imagine it won't be as pleasing to non-sports fans (just as I enjoyed SOLANGE (17A: Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky") but imagine many solvers will greet her appearance here with a "huh?"—this is her sixth NYTXW appearance, though, you should probably have her name committed to memory by now).

Bullets:

• 24A: Airbnb inclusion, usually (LINEN) — I mean, sure, but is that word actually used in the Airbnb listing? LINEN? I had the "L" but still struggled with this clue. 
• 21A: Cause for getting stuck (MIRE) — Had the "M," wanted MIRE, held back because MUCK seemed possible. 
• 30D: Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers (PUTTEES) — gonna go out on a limb and say the STUPA / PUTTEES crossing is gonna trip some solvers up. Those are both very specialized, foreign, non-everyday terms, crossing at a vowel. Seems dicey. I completely forgot that STUPA was a thing, and was so happy that some part of me dimly but confidently remembered that PUTTEES were a thing (though if you'd asked me to explain what kind of thing before I solved this puzzle, I would not have been able to help you). I associate PUTTEES with British soldiers in India. Turns out they were worn by all kinds of people and date from antiquity, but I think of British India. Why? Hang on ... Yeah, here we go: the word derives from the Hindi word for "bandage." 

Worn since antiquity, the puttee was adopted as part of the service uniform of foot and mounted soldiers serving in British India during the second half of the nineteenth century. In its original form the puttee comprised long strips of cloth worn as a tribal legging in the Himalayas. The British Indian Army found this garment to be both comfortable and inexpensive, although it was considered to lack the smartness of the gaiter previously worn." (wikipedia)

• 37A: Instrument depicted in paintings by Hals and Caravaggio (LUTE) — picture me just sitting on "L--E" waiting for a letter to come along and make the LUTE v. LYRE decision. Because that's what happened. Thank god STUPOR came along to help me (though ... I could've used a less depressing clue on STUPOR (29D: A heavy drinker may be found in one))

• 39A: Use for a yew (HEDGE) — first read "use" as a verb, not a noun, which was very confusing. 
• 27D: "Divergent" author Veronica (ROTH) — a real live-by-the-name / die-by-the-name kind of day. Never going to remember this author's name. I've tried. It just won't take. Whereas SOLANGE and Hermann HESSE and good ol' Pauline KAEL and LON Chaney and Michael CERA were real helpers today. So I guess I came out on the right side of the proper noun divide today. Mostly. But you don't tend to feel the ones you know, only the ones you don't. Only takes one mystery name to grind you to a halt.
• 45D: The Hornets, on a scoreboard (CHA) — not a great answer (CHA = Charlotte, btw—they're an NBA team), but I do have to thank the Hornets for helping me see quickly that TOENAIL CLIPPERS was wrong. You might say the Hornets beat the Clippers. You might. If you enjoy very mild NBA word play, you might. You don't have to. It's probably not the greatest idea. But you might, is my only point, really. You might say it. 

[Couldn't find any clips of Hornets beating Clippers, so here's Clippers beating Hornets, back in January]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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